Martin Schatz' Continuing Quest For Quality

April 8, 1985|By Joe Kilsheimer of The Sentinel Staff

When Martin Schatz, dean of the Roy E. Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College, was associate dean of the School of Business Administration at Adelphi University in the mid-1970s, he proposed raising student admission standards to improve the school's quality.

But the school's dean opposed the move on the grounds that the school couldn't afford to lose students who would have been eliminated by the higher standards.

''His position was that Adelphi couldn't afford not to run a quality program,'' said Harold Lazarus of Hempstead, N.Y., a friend of Schatz and the former dean of Hofstra University's school of business.

''He told me that he didn't want to be at a business school that didn't offer its students the highest possible quality education,'' Lazarus said.

Now, almost 10 years later, getting the support to run a business school the way he thinks it ought to be run doesn't appear to be a problem for the diminutive, Bronx-bred Schatz.

And he can graphically demonstrate the difference between higher and lower admission standards. Adelphi officials feared losing tuition money if the standards were raised, he said. But in his small, spartan office at Rollins, Schatz punched a few keys on his computer and a bright red bar graph shot up on the screen, showing continuing tuition income increases that have followed the raising of admission standards at the Rollins business school.

Signs appear favorable that the Crummer school's MBA program will receive full acreditation from the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business when it meets in Orlando on April 15-17. There are 207 schools in the country with accredited MBA programs, but only 14 that offer only graduate business degrees. Rollins would be the 15th, putting it in the same league with Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Cornell and UCLA.

The drive for accreditation began five years ago, one year after Schatz arrived at Rollins from a position as dean of business and public management at State University of New York in Utica.

It is a move that holds great significance for both Rollins and Central Florida, business leaders say. Companies considering relocating to the region will be attracted by the management recruiting potential. For Rollins, the Crummer school is providing an opportunity to heighten the college's profile throughout Central Florida and to reach out for corporate support.

One of the things that Schatz proudly points out in tours of the school's Spanish-styled building is a collection of plaques noting companies that have pledged annual donations of $1,000. Last year, Schatz collected 60 plaques. This year, he plans to add another 40. And he hopes to return the favor by sending graduates to Central Florida companies.

''We look at ourselves as being a school of national reputation, but for Florida,'' Schatz said.

Associates of 48-year-old Schatz described him as being a man brimming with great intensity, which he keeps under the wrap of a professorial demeanor.

''He's the calmest intense person I have ever known,'' said Philip Crosby, president of Philip Crosby Associates, who also heads the Crummer school's board of advisers.

''He's also been very adept at getting along with his staff, and that's quite an accomplishment,'' Crosby said. ''I can't think of a more difficult group of people to work with than a group of academicians.''

Actually, Schatz did not start out to be an academic. His first love was chemistry and he initially majored in chemical engineering at the University of Alabama.

''Then I found out that a career in chemical engineering meant working around a bunch of smelly chemical plants, and I knew I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life,'' Schatz said.

So he transferred into metallurgy. The reason: ''Metallurgy was the only area I could transfer into without losing credits.''

After a stint as a research metallurgist with a Cambridge, Mass., company, Schatz obtained a master's degree in business from the University of Florida and then went to work at The Boeing Co. as a business analyst for the aerospace division. After less than two years there, he made the decision that Boeing and ''most companies are poorly managed.''

At Boeing, ''My boss's whole aim in life was to hire people at higher salaries so he could use that as evidence to push his own salary higher,'' Schatz said. ''And I got fed up with the system that allowed that -- that paid more attention to the rules and regulations than it did to productivity.''

Schatz said his Boeing experience inspired him to go back to school to obtain a Ph.D. in business administration. Enrolling at New York University, Schatz paid for his education while working as an assistant to the graduate business school dean, a job that led him to decide on a career in academic administration.